20 Facts About Teru Mikami
by SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: Teru's gym routine became a lot more focused on exercise that promoted cardiovascular health once he started helping Kira.


Full Title: 20 of the countless things that Teru Mikami would probably not start a conversation about  
Author: SunMoonAndSpoon  
Rating: PG-13  
Notes: This was something that I wrote for the livejournal community, 20notes. Basically, it's 20 "facts" (aka, fanon things that I made up) about Teru Mikami, woven together to form a story. I enjoyed writing it greatly, and I hope that you'll feel the same way about reading it. Please leave a review on your way out!

Also, many thanks to Reka, for listening to me whine about this throughout the process, and to Viola Canina, who helped me form some of these ideas through fangirly conversations.

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One,

Teru didn't remember anything about his father. His mother once told him that he was an irresponsible twit who was, for all she cared, dead in a ditch somewhere. And Teru believed her, until one day he overheard his grandmother telling his cousin that the reason Teru's father left his family is that he couldn't stand dealing with such a strange and difficult baby. It didn't hurt if he didn't think about it, but some days, he couldn't help himself.

Two,

When Teru was a baby, he used to spike tremendous fevers that painted him red as an apple. The first few times, his mother panicked and took him to the emergency room, but the fever would almost always go down before they got there. After that, she declared those trips pointless, and she would instead give him some aspirin, tuck him into his crib, and call it a day.

Three,

One time, Teru's mother tried to take him on vacation. She'd been saving for months to travel to Mt. Fuji for the weekend, and while they did make it to the mountain, the change in routine was so distressing for Teru that he spent three hours in a gas station bathroom, crying and vomiting. His mother said he was embarrassing her, and that he had better grow out of this kind of behavior by his eighth birthday.

Four,

Teru's glasses cost approximately 20,000 yen per pair. Due to repeated facial punchings, about seven of those pairs of glasses wound up smashed beneath the feet of one of his classmates. This meant that his mother had to shell out over 140,000 yen in total, for new glasses alone.

Five,

When Teru was nine, he developed a furious crush on a girl named Yukari. Yukari was a short, snub-nosed girl who trimmed her bangs straight across every morning. He would invent excuses to hover around her, bump into her as she walked by. And he stared longingly in her direction every day, until he saw her push another girl down a small fight of stairs. After that, she was nothing but another faceless beast in need of punishment.

Six,

After his mother died, Teru didn't defend his classmates from bullies for one full week. Later, he couldn't satisfactorily account for why that was. He told himself that it was because there was no one to help that particular week, or that it was part of some long forgotten strategy. If he was trying to honor her in any way, he would not admit it.

Seven,

Teru liked to do the same things every day. If he could, he would have had the same set of meals every day, too, but he knew that variety was important for maintaining one's health. So, he had a fixed, weekly schedule. His favorite day was Thursday, because it means he got to make chicken katsu—for some reason he got a kick out of messing with the breadcrumbs.

Eight,

Teru wasn't sure if he had OCD, but he'd been told on multiple occasions that he did. In college, health services offered free counseling sessions, and he attended one after a cancelled class left him with a blank day and a smoldering sense of anxiety. The therapist said that he relied too much on routine, and that he needed to 'loosen up.' She recommended a psychiatrist, so he could be further evaluated for OCD, but it cost money that he didn't have, and he was irritated by the whole process, so he never followed up on it.

Nine,

One summer when Teru was in college, he was fired from his job waiting tables. He had a tendency to get into nasty arguments with customers who were rude or corrupt, and that was terrible for business. He spent the next few weeks in isolation, save for vague attempts to find another job.

Ten,

The reason Teru's hair was so long is that he couldn't afford to get it cut professionally. It never got to be waist-length because of a girl in his chemistry class who harbored a secret desire to be a hairdresser, but he couldn't do that very often. By the time he could afford to get it cut, he had realized that one of his cheekbones was slightly larger than the other, and that long hair hid this well. As such, he never did get a short haircut.

Eleven,

Late one night when he should have been studying for an exam, Teru stalked into a bar with his fists clenched and his head held high. He sat down by himself in a corner, drinking whatever the bartender recommended as he tried to summon the courage to talk to a woman. He was sick of isolation, and he did stand up and haunt various tables, but in the end, he left the bar alone.

Twelve,

Teru had a severe, life-threatening allergy to strawberries. He had to carry an epipen around with him in case he accidentally consumed them—he could have gone into anaphylactic shock and died, otherwise.

Thirteen,

Sometimes, when he had nothing better to do, Teru would watch the _Super Sentai Series_ on TV. He knew it was juvenile and unrealistic, but he found it comforting to see the good guys win. The first time he lost a case, it helped a lot.

Fourteen,

It wasn't logical at all, but when Teru first received the Death Note, he found himself hesitating about writing down his client's names at work. He didn't use the Death Note's pages, and he knew that ordinary paper wouldn't kill them. All the same, he would keep an ear out for news of their death for days afterwards.

Fifteen,

Teru never really knew what Kira looked like, but that didn't stop him from having at least one sex dream per week about him. He would wake from them so humiliated that he nearly wrote his own name down in the Death Note—after all, it was a serious affront towards his God. Afterwards, he would masturbate over the toilet, blushing furiously as images of God's naked body danced through his head.

Sixteen,

He didn't actually laugh about it, but Teru found the word 'delete' to be hilarious in its official context.

Seventeen,

Teru's gym routine became a lot more focused on exercise that promoted cardiovascular health once he started helping Kira.

Eighteen,

Teru never believed in anybody but himself, until Kira. His mother used to take him to Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and Christian churches praying to whomever she thought would listen, but none of them ever did. At the time, he thought that there was simply no one there, but later he came to realize that she was undeserving. In prison, lying alone on a bolted bed, he cried out to every god he'd ever known.

Nineteen,

After the first day in prison, they put him in solitary confinement. Pedophiles and rapists are generally the most abhorred in a prison setting, but many criminals thought the Kira movement even worse. They knew who Teru was and what he'd done, and they would not forgive him.

Twenty,

Much like his fallen God, Teru lost his mind at the end of it. Though he did take his own life, he regretted it when his head cleared and he was lying pressed up against the prison bars in a pool of his own blood. He did not regret it when he was slamming his skull against the wall, or when he was drinking the cleaning fluid that scorched his throat and made him curl into a ball of pain and puking. He did not regret it until it was too late. And then, when nobody could possibly help him, he screamed. His damaged throat protested, but he screamed until he died. And he would have given anything, _anything, _for his mother to be there to silence him.


End file.
